Lost Worlds of the Guiana Highlands
Stewart McPherson
I’m guessing most viewers of the Pixar flick Up were convinced that the surreal, twisted landscape on the top of the mountain where the balloon-house landed were figments of overheated animators’ brains. However, based on the pictures in Lost Worlds of the Guiana Highlands, it is clear that much of the artwork was straight still-life renditions of the eerie scenery at the top of these remote cloud-shrouded mountains. The tepuis, mountain islands shooting vertically thousands of feet into the air, have been objects of fascination and speculation for centuries. Until the 1800s, no one had ever managed to climb to the top of the straight and treacherous mountains. Despite their immense inaccessibility, numerous stories have...
Micro
Michael Crichton and Richard Preston
Despite being dead, Michael Crichton has managed to still write quite prolifically. The book, finished posthumously by science writer Richard Preston, has its moments. The premise is pure old-school Crichton. An evil tech company owner shrinks down a bunch of science grad students and they must survive in a jungle. The descriptions of the micro world from a tiny size are lovely and intriguing. Crichton/Preston provide tons of fascinating details on insects, spiders, birds and the plants of a Hawaiian jungle. Aspects of being super-small that I had never considered become excellent plot points – gravity has much less effect, bodies run through massive amounts of calories, micro people need to break the...
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
Ben Mezrich
I’m tempted to add a new category for books called “what the hell were you thinking?” Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (later made into the movie The Social Network) never seems to come close to answering this question. Sex on the Moon chronicles the brief rise and spectacular fall of Thad Roberts. Within a few short years of being thrown out of his crushing Mormon family, Roberts finds himself working at NASA. Driven by an immense desire to be an astronaut, Roberts flies through a triple major, extra-curricular groups and anything else he can do to increase his changes of someday walking on Mars. He is rewarded with an internship-type position at NASA. Then, mysteriously and so very close to a full-time...
Catch Me If You Can
Frank W. Abagnale
The movie version of Catch Me If You Can is exciting and fast-paced, with plenty of Hollywood glitz that adds a glossy veneer, making many of Frank Abagnale’s exploits seem fake and overblown. While enjoyable, the movie doesn’t begin to compare to Abagnale’s descriptions of his short but highly lucrative life of crime. With a wickedly quick mind, Abagnale kept one step ahead of the FBI by continually changing his strategy and learning new cons. While almost all were based on cashing phony checks, the complexity schemes grew by leaps and bounds. Many of his earlier attempts at passing bad checks would, and should have been, caught. However, like “Clark Rockefeller” Abagnale also understood the importance of...
Travels in Siberia
Ian Frazier
Frazier’s dense and fascinating look at Siberia from seven trips over two decades makes a nowhere place into somewhere. Most often associated with gulag camps and cold, Siberia is as as vast and varied hunk of land as the US. Starting with his early fascination with the country, Frazier recounts his earliest forray into Siberia and his decision to mount a full-scale trip. The seven week drive across the country shows both beautiful country and the ravages of an ugly past – from the Mongols to Communism. His accounts of the residents, food, swarms of mosquitoes and their ever-dying van make the trip into an adventure. A fair amount of Russian history is mixed in, though without the tedious rote of a textbook. In later trips,...
Face to Face: Polar Portraits
Huw Lewis-Jones
This is a brilliant and gripping collection of photos, some almost 150 years old, of the brave (and possibly insane) women and men who explore the poles. The book gives a wide range of vignettes – the big names like Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton – but also their crew, modern explorers and scientists, Inuit residents and guides and other integral people. Beautiful, often unreal, photos accompanied by gripping ...